One of the most common pitfalls of organizing your tribe is to get mired down in the metrics and lose track of the overall goals. It is important to include weekly and monthly metrics in your plan in order for everyone helping to guide the tribe to have a clear understanding of expectations. As a manager of the army of supporters however, the metrics do not make up the end goal.

For example, say the overall goal is to increase awareness for a product, cause or issue in a specific online community. The metrics spelled out in your plan include identifying a certain number of mother supporters with school-aged children. The recruitment of high numbers as spelled out in your plan are proving difficult for your team, however those your team are having great success in identifying happen to be high profile mothers with active blogs or holding leadership positions with reputable parent organizations.

A manager mired down in the metrics will continue to push the team to meet goals as spelled out in the original plan and take them to task for missing the mark. This approach will result in tail chasing, going in circles not moving forward. One who has a handle on the end goal will recognize the value in this unexpected success and adjust the plan to best utilize these assets to move forward toward the end goal.